[ttn]

Disclaimer: I've grown tomatoes, strawberries and weed indoors with artificial lighting.

As long as there is no shocking event like global drought or famine I do not think vertical farming or indoor farming will be a norm anytime soon as it takes massive, massive amount of energy/capital.

That being said, the moment we figure out using fusion energy, conventional farming will most probably vanish.

Also R&D on agriculture robots is a nice side perk, there is only so much to automate in agriculture & horticulture.

[konschubert]

Yep, it's all about cost of energy. The solar farm that powers a vertical farm will always take up more space than the vertical farm saves.

We have a nice podcast episode about this, maybe this interests you: https://www.predictions-podcast.com/2020/03/29/vertical-farm...

[SamBam]

I can't listen to your podcast right now, but solar panels are more efficient than photosynthesis, and you can produce the wavelength of light needed for plants by LEDs using a fraction of that power, so what makes you say that the solar farm that powers a vertical farm will always take up more space than the vertical farm saves?

[konschubert]

You're right, I was generalising a bit in my above comment. The wavelength - focusing argument actually comes up in the podcast and we agree it might possibly offer a way out of the energy trap.

PS: Feel free to subscribe now to listen later ;)

[wil421]

Someone claimed a while back most of these vertical farms would switch to growing weed once it became legal in the state(s) they have farms.

I’m not sure if any other crop beside weed would turn a significant profit. You might be able to get a government contract to grow some other controlled substance and turn a small profit.

The only other way it would work would be if it was a co-op owned by residents or subsidized by the local government.

[dumbfoundded]

The only pressure to grow weed inside is quality but premium flower is losing market share quickly. Every extracted product (vapes, edibles, drinks, topicals) is created from biomass which is best grown outdoors for the cheapest price.

There also isn't really that much weed needed as people think. Outdoors you can get roughly ~1,500lbs per acre of dried flower. In Colorado 2017, roughly 20,000lbs of cannabis was consumed per month. If you project based on population, the whole USA only needs about 7,000 acres harvested, annually. Maybe they'll be some loss so let's say 15,000 acres would safely cover it. In the USA, there's over 90,000,000 acres of corn grown a year. Cannabis is actually a very small market from the farming side and the indoor grows will very much be a niche market.

As for the general economics, vertical farming will never make sense until either the underlying economics of farming change (maybe from climate change) or energy becomes free.

[throwaway201103]

Presumably the demand for weed is already being met (legally or not). Is there evidence that legalization prompts a large increase in demand? Just thinking about myself, I did not use weed when it was illegal, and legalization has not changed that.